Unboxing My Victorian Clothing Haul: Antiques With Secrets

Hello everyone and welcome back. I recently added quite a few more antique pieces to my collection, three of which I actually won in an auction from Augusta Auctions, which is a pretty exciting process. They came as a lot together. I got a really good price for them. Two of the three aren't in the best condition, and those are the two more exciting ones. The third one that is in good condition is a little more plain, so I have a feeling that's why I managed to get such a good deal on these, but I thought I would share them with you because they are spectacular for the trim and the details on them, so I thought we could get an up-close look and learn a little bit more about them today. More specifically, taking a look at who made them. I somehow ended up with a perfect little trifecta where I have a jacket from a department store, a jacket from a more local fashion store, and a jacket from a couturier. Three very different makers for these garments, which will be interesting to see if perhaps some of the techniques or the supplies are a little bit different between each one of the three. The first one we're going to take a look at is from 1908, and this is the department store jacket. It is from Carson, Peary, Scott & Company, and if you are from the Midwest, you may know that company. They are a department store that recently disappeared, but had been around for a very long time. In fact, they started up as separate companies in the 19th century, and by 1890 had all three, Carson, Peary, and Scott, combined into one store, and they opened up multiple stores in Chicago, in Peoria, and all sorts of different locations around the Midwest from there. So they sold tons and tons of different things. In 1904, they moved into a new building, which today I guess is a Target. It's a little bit jarring to see, but it was considered a really spectacular building at the time, with all of its detail work, but floor upon floor of large open space for all of the different departments. This garment would have been sold probably out of that store, since it comes from around 1908. Its most defining features that bring me to that year is the fact that it has that little faux vest front. It also has larger sleeves, but not large on top, small on bottom, like the 1890s that we're going to take a look at. Overall, a little bit more voluminous, but it has that cuff down at the bottom that tucks all of the volume in, and in general, the trim style, the overall lack of really curvy fit, also dates us to that era, along with the length and so many other things. Next up, we're traveling back to 1894 for this jacket, and this one comes with a pretty exciting story. So the maker for this is Barton, out of Baltimore, Maryland. More specifically, it is a company owned by Lottie Barton, and she seems to be a pretty interesting character. She started up as a dressmaker around 1880 in Baltimore, and was well known throughout not only that region, but Washington DC, New York, Pennsylvania, and she even outfitted First Lady Frances Cleveland, so she had a pretty high level of clientele. Around 1880, she picked up a very well experienced tailor named Franz Flottel, and he stayed with her until 1896, where he branched off into his own business, but his obituary told in great detail all of the different accomplishments that he's had, and his training over the years, so he clearly would have run a very high quality tailoring shop out of Barton's business. The more interesting story about her, however, is not where her business lies, or who she hired, but in fact happened in 1893. She and a couple of other dressmakers went over to Europe to do a bit of a tour to look at the fashions, and they apparently brought back with them quite a bit of clothing. When they came through customs, they said that they had nothing to declare, this was all their own clothing, but a very quick perusal discovered that they had an excessive amount of clothing, in $5,000 worth. $5,000 in that era's money, not comparative to today. That is a lot of clothing, so they of course were in a lot of trouble for that. It made national newspapers, so she was definitely an interesting character who really put a great emphasis on making sure that she had the highest quality goods in the latest fashions. I can date that jacket to 1894 because it starts to have the larger upper portion of the sleeves. We're growing into the leg of mutton sleeves, but it is not huge just yet. It's not nearly as large as 1895 or 1896, and the style when it comes to the length, as well as also having the little faux vest front, the shape of the collar, the lapels, the fur trim, all of those things also really point to it being on the earlier side of the leg of mutton sleeve as it's growing larger, rather than as it's deflating. They get a little weird on both ends in terms of their shapes that make it pretty distinct, so 1894 seems to be when I can find the most similar garments in terms of all of those elements. The final piece is definitely the most spectacular. It is eye-catching even in a bit of a sorry state. It does have what we call glass bead disease, so that's why all the black beads look a little bit frosted at this point. It has to do with the chemical makeup not only of the glass, but also the storage conditions that it's been under and all those things. Potentially there is a way to clean it, but it's about a 50-50 chance that it will just keep coming back and that the glass might continue to crack and eventually just shatter and fall apart. So that's one of the reasons why this piece made it to me at such a low price, even though some of its siblings from its maker are in really established museums. So this was made by Maison du Lafay, which translates somewhat literally to God made this, so you can tell they have kind of high standards. And you might not have heard of them, I actually hadn't, though in the 19th century they were rather consistently listed alongside of companies like Worth. So this is a very high level couturier based out of France, and they made some exquisite pieces. They specialized particularly in cloaks and mantles and coats, outer garments, which is exactly what this is. Interestingly enough I did find one museum mentioned that they treated these things as ready-to-wear, so they would have been making these things up to be purchased as is, or perhaps with a little bit of alteration, but they weren't being made up completely by custom order, in all cases at least. It doesn't mean that they didn't also do that, just that they also had a ready-to-wear side. But they have a very star-studded history as well. They outfitted a lot of royalty, including the Queen of Portugal at the time, Maria Pia, and they would have been on some of the fanciest people in France and all over the world. I had a little bit more of a difficult time dating it, because it dates to a very specific era that has almost a sister. I'm putting this at about 1898, maybe 1899, but as we look at these sleeves, they are much reduced from that larger 1894 version. They have a little bit of fullness at the top. Do you want to note that it is horizontal fullness? It's not standing up straight, but more going out to the sides. It has the Medici collar that is so distinct to the 1890s and the turn of the century, and has a length that is more about mid-hip. It's not particularly short or particularly long. And it's all of those things together that mean that it's actually kind of hard to put a date on it, because if I simply defined it as not too large of sleeves, a Medici collar, and mid-hip level, well that could also define many things from around 1890 to 91. However, there are a couple tiny differences. The biggest one is the fact that their sleeves are sitting gathered upright. They're puffy towards the top versus more out to the sides. And this garment not only puffs that direction in general, but it actually has some reinforcements inside, as we'll see, that force it out. So that's how I can be pretty sure that it dates to the 1898 point rather than the 1890, though it has a lot of similar features. But now that we've been introduced to our three jackets and who made them, we're going to head upstairs to the studio to get detailed looks at everything inside and out. And here we have our first coat. We're starting with the 1908 from Carson Puri Scott. This has seen a lot of wear and tear in terms of its storage, so we're going to see a fair bit of damage on this. But that gives us some pretty good insight, quite literally, inside of it. At first glance, we have a lot of different parts and pieces on this. The main body is out of a silk velvet, and it's seen the most wear and tear. I think as it's been stored over the years, you can actually see indentations of the cuffs and the other things that have been laying up against it. The trimming is also silk, as are the buttons and the rest of the braid around everything. There's another type of silk velvet that runs around the collar and down the front and on the cuffs. It at first looked really tingy, but it's just changeable. And inside we have a very shattered cream silk lining. It was a silk satin at one point. It is quickly disintegrating, but that means we're going to be able to see everything inside, which is the most exciting part for me. But we're gonna start on the outside. So first off, we have this false front, which closes the hooks and eyes. There's some little velvet ribbons that you can see that are sort of bordering the inside of this and finishing it off. I think this might have been done not only as a decorative thing in case this was left open, but also because the hooks and eyes are constantly scraping against this area, and the velvet ribbon is going to hold up a lot better than the silk satin would have, even if it hadn't shattered with time. On the outside of this little vest piece, there is a binding of silk satin and then two, no, one braid. It's just a very fancy braid that goes around the edge. And the design is carried over into the rest of the garment. The collar has the same sort of look to it. It has a different lining, so we'll have to get into that and find out if that's original or if that was replaced. There's evidence that it was just replaced later, so it might have been that the lining was starting to go pretty early. Same thing with the cuffs. We have the same basic design there. These are pretty dirty and horned down, though, but they have the same concept. There's black silk on the backside of the cuffs instead of the little black velvet ribbons, however, which makes sense since this is going to be up against the black velvet. It would have got dark anyway. And at the cuffs, we have this little bit of extra silk, the same corded silk that's around the collar, which is interesting not only because the black silk that seems to have been around the cuffs to begin with has deteriorated and started shattering, but also because as I was pulling back here, I realized I can see this little band of silk, which makes me wonder if this was actually slightly extended at some point, which would not be that weird. It wouldn't have been a very long extension, but just a half an inch maybe. Even that, it may have just been recovering where things were starting to shatter, pull away, and the cuffs may have literally just pulled off of the silk because it was starting to shatter. Around all of the edges to mirror that tiny braid is a very large braid. This stuff is heavy and wide, so they did have to do a little bit of extra folding here. It's starting to pop off in a few places. It's really dense. I am surprised that they managed to work this around all of these curves and keep it in its shape. Oh, so much effort. Oh, also turn back here, we can see a little bit more of that velvet ribbon, so it continues not just around the vest front, but all the way down the front. When it comes to the higher up areas where we have the little vest front, there's the black silk that I found in the sleeves as well, so they've used that in a few different places, but that's what seems to be going on from what we can see on the outside of the front. It's just a whole lot of decoration. There are no pockets, there are no seams in the front area. The first seam that we come across is at the side seam here, so there's no darts or shaping at the shoulder, at the bust, anywhere down here. So this would have been fairly loose fitted in the front, basically large enough to get over the bust and fall down from there. Moving on to the interior now, I have to be very gentle with this because it is not the best condition. At the same time, there's not much I can do to damage it at this point. Obviously we have the silk lining throughout that has been machine stitched and then caught in by hand. It does appear that the cotton flannel that I'm feeling throughout, and this is definitely cotton not wool, which is less typical for the one with the silk satin. It's caught up in the same seams and that's covering pretty much the entire body from what I can see. There's nowhere that it doesn't show up. You can even see it back here in the little vent that we have at the side back, so it continues around a little bit of hand stitching to keep it in place where that seam is done. The silk satin is then hand stitched on top of it to finish it off. In addition to the cotton flannel though, there are a few other things that are inside. I could find them in a few spots, and that is if we pull very carefully back, we can start to see a little bit of linen canvas. So the linen canvas is likely to be up front in the different areas where we're going to need the reinforcement. We might have some in this little vest front, can't quite tell. I do also want to note that the flannel covers into this vest front. If we peek inside of here, there's just a little bit of linen canvas that runs the strip down through there. It's basted into place, would have added the extra strength needed to deal with the hooks and eyes, and there is another layer of linen canvas inside the body as well. I do see some stitching through. I think those stitches are just from the trim, however, so we're not dealing with something that has been pad stitched or any crazy amount of effort. I do have this vest front not stitched in the vest, very loosely stitched. Most of the threads are starting to go, the silk that it's stitched to also going, so it's not the most stable at the moment. There's also canvas in the collar up here, which yes, the silk that I'm seeing here, the corded silk, is definitely a later addition. There is plenty of the silk satin peeking out, so that likely means considering that this style only lasted for a few years, probably in the first year or so it started to go and was wearing out the rough spots around the collar and the cuffs, so that's why they added that. There's also a little bit that's pulled away here, so this entire thing is just falling apart at the stitches, which is kind of sad for the original, but is great for us. Oh, you can even see where they attempted to do some rather futile repairs as everything was coming apart. There also appears to be more than one layer of the canvas up here. They can have one layer that is put on before the trim is put on, and then the extra one to kind of help keep it standing upright would be great, so that makes perfect sense when you have a tall standing collar like that that's going to get a lot of wear. In terms of the front, the linen canvas definitely stretches pretty far across. It covers at to about where the buttons are, so where the trim stops seems to be about where the edge of the canvas stops, and it continues all the way down to the bottom, following along that line, so go up probably into the shoulder, at least into the neck line up at the top. It doesn't continue around the back of the neck, and it doesn't seem to continue around the hem either. Sometimes there's some weighting or some extra reinforcement around the hem, but that doesn't seem to be the case here. So let's go ahead and turn her over. She does have a fair bit of damage on the back. I did notice that early on. You can feel the crispiness as it were, so very likely the way she was stored at some point was on top of maybe a piece of wood that had some varnish on it or something else that melted in the heat, probably stored in an attic. We can see we have one singular back piece here, no central back seam, though I do believe there was a central back seam in the lining, but it wouldn't be for shape. We have our two little pleats on either side here, which are accented with some little buttons that are the same as the front. There's just the one side piece, no secondary side back pieces, so not a lot of shaping on this. And the sleeves, a little bit of gathering up at the top of the sleeve is all that it takes to get this rather full style in place. This isn't a super fitted armscye, that's actually pretty large and dropped. This is definitely meant to be a coat that goes over an entire ensemble. This isn't really a complex piece, despite the fact that it has a very elegant appearance. The plush definitely would have been pretty expensive at the time, as would all of the trimmings, but overall this isn't really a complex garment. There's a fair bit of hand stitching to hold everything into place, but it's not knowledgeable hand stitching. It is simply baste these things together, running stitch these things together, do it as quickly as possible, and as simply as possible. It'd be a very warm, very practical coat in Chicago winters, and definitely saw a good bit of love from whoever owned it and wore it over the years. Next, we have definitely the heaviest of the three, our Baltimore coat, which is in surprisingly great condition, especially since she has fur trimming over her, and often fur does not survive all that well. She definitely looks plainer than our last example, because she's made out of a plain black wool. This is a type of wool that, honestly, I've seen so many coats out of. Actually, it's a little bit of a nap though, they're pumping my hand on it, and the trimming on it is in a fur. This is a really soft fur. I'm not an expert on that, so I don't know what type it is, but it is surprisingly well preserved. This means that this coat probably hasn't seen as many temperature and humidity changes as the last example, and the linings seem to be in much better condition. Starting off, she also has this little false front, but it is a pretty different style. It has a strip of fur that runs up the entire front and down around. It too fastens with a ton of hooks and eyes, some of which are broken, in fact, which is pretty impressive to have one of these snap. These things are hefty, so I am shocked by that. Oh, I found the first straight pin. Always have to watch for those. I'm going to quite carefully bury the end of that a little bit deeper into our garment before it catches me, but finding a straight pin randomly in coats is sort of more common than finding none. The lining is a black silk satin, which is in much better condition than a previous lining, so we're going to have a little bit less of a easy viewing on this, but I think we're still going to find some interesting things. So much the same way, this little fake vest front is just much longer than the previous one, and where the body of the coat covers up, there is a sort of faux lapel style that gets wider up here. It's not terribly visible when the collar is down, but when the collar is turned up for warmth, you would see this little hint of the lapel there, which is really adorable. The interesting thing to note here is that the lapel is lined in a black silk, which is not the same silk satin of the interior. It's actually a little bit of a twill weave, and it's the same twill weave that can be found in the cuffs here. That seems to be specific to areas of the fur more so than the body, and there's definitely stiffener of some type in this. This is not just the fur. It seems to be folded over, and then the lining is stitched to it from the looks of it. So the lining does stop about here, so right at the point where it reaches its narrow width to go the rest of the way down, we stop having a separate lining. Underneath the rest of the fur further down, there's some sort of cotton twill, and that seems to have the fur directly stitched to it. So very likely, that's the same interfacing that is running the whole way of that fur, where the fur is stitched to the fabric first, and then can be added onto the body of the coat. If we pull it back this direction, there is a different glazed cotton in this case, so it's extra shiny. You can see some of the hand stitching for where the first strip was added, so that might be one of the strength layers. So that way, the best front is stitched directly to a really sturdy fabric rather than just a lightweight silk. Looking at the rest of this front, it does have a dart that runs the whole way down from the bust, so it's got a little bit more shaping than our last version, which makes sense. This is a little bit earlier in time, and they would have had a bit more fit to the body at that point. Moving up to the collar, it is fur on both sides. We move over to the sleeves. The cuffs are tacked as we go a little bit further down to keep them from flipping down, because they are just so large. Inside of the sleeve, you can see the same silk satin, though it is shattering just a little bit around the edges here, but honestly, that sees more wear and tear than any other part of the coat, so I'm not surprised by that. The fact that it's in that good of condition is pretty shocking unto itself. The sleeves are quite large up at the top. They're pleated in. I do want to note it's just the one seam that runs down the front, but they pieced. Either means that the wool wasn't large enough, or just the pattern was too unwieldy, so rather than putting a second seam in, which they didn't need for the shape, there is just this piecing line that runs from about the elbow all the way up to the top. Moving to the inside to see what we can find. A whole lot more black lining. Oh, we do have a little hole, however. That's very exciting. I always love finding wear and tear. This hole right here is all we really need in order to get in and see what there is. So just like the previous one, there is a linen canvas that runs throughout, and we can sort of peek over here. There's another strip of linen canvas that runs down that best front, and we see a layer of wool, and then we see that layer of cotton that we could find earlier that's extending not too far, but a couple inches into the body of the coat. There is a dart in the canvas as well. They stitched the dart in with the seam facing the opposite way instead of overlaying, and then these stitches here are whip stitches to hold the layers together, so that would have helped stabilize that from shifting around inside the body. The edge of the canvas is right there, so it doesn't exactly extend far across. Probably just extend up to the shoulder and down to the bottom. As we get over here to the sleeves, this is all that silk twill, and there are remnants around these sleeves of stitches holding the pleats in place. So the lining was pleated up separately from the larger sleeve, and then they have big stitches across them to hold the pleats in place. Looking at the back here, there's a little bit of a pleat just to offer some relief in terms of movement of the lining. It feels, yep, like all of the lining seams are stitched to the body seams, so everything's assembled, laid down, and then they kind of go along and just fold back and stitch each one of these down, moving our way down to the bottom. Oh, there's a little weight right here. I love finding those. So it's about three quarters to an inch wide little washer weight. It has the bar across the middle, which allows you to tack it into place. The hem in general feels pretty heavy, so I'm going to guess that there's another piece, a strip that seems about this wide, that's running the whole way around of that canvas in addition to the heavier wool. There's another weight right here, so there's one at the center front, nothing at the dart, one at the seam to the side, and let's see if there's any others. I don't feel any others further back than that. When we come back here to the center back, there's an open vent, and they added a little patch here to cover up the top of that pleat. The lining is stitched a little bit further back from the edge around the bottom and around that vent there. There's some top stitching done in a couple of rows around the entire garment to finish it off that way as well. Oh, I do also feel, I need to go check for that, feeling the sleeves. I was like, these sleeves feel particularly heavy. I almost feel another layer in there. We have all of that kind of apart at the cuffs. Let's take a look in there. I might be able to see something there. Oh my goodness, there we go. Oh, I didn't notice it earlier. There is a whole layer of navy blue wool flannel. That would have made the sleeves incredibly warm. This would have been such a wonderful winter coat. Sleeves large enough to fit whatever garment you need inside, and the whole thing is simple. It would go with just about anything. It's very elegantly made, a little bit more care going into it, even though it doesn't have quite the same pizzazz as the department store version. And last, but certainly never call her least, we have our turn of the century couture coat. Oh, there is so much detail in this. I don't even know where to begin. I guess starting with the fabric, it is also a silk velvet like our first example. This is a very dark, almost midnight blue. You have to really get a lot of light on it to see the hints of blue. And that carries around the entire body and the underside or really the flipped upside of the collar. The edges are trimmed in feathers. The collar here is lined in a fur, which is more what I expect for how fur tends to deteriorate over time. So this fur is far from great shape. Inside is a ivory silk satin, which does seem to be holding together much better than our first example. The sleeves seem to be lined in the same satin. And then, of course, throughout the body are these lovely glass beads, which are, of course, not in the best conditions, but they still glitter nonetheless. So what we can see first is just like the other two. This one fastens with hooks and eyes. These are coat hooks, they sort of tilt down at the bottom to make sure that everything holds into place. You can see just peeking around down here that there is a bit of tape, and I do wonder if that is from the feathers, because they seem to continue the whole way down, even though they've broken a bit. So I think there's a cotton tape that encases the feathers the whole way, so that would be added as a separate trim. There's a little bit of separation here we can peek in, and yep, that does seem to be the case. The fur seems to be over the top of the velvet, so if the fur was removed there would be a finished collar. The fur is then just whipped over the top, and there's more hooks and eyes up at the collar here, so that way, if need be, that could be closed. So the front of this has a seam that runs, or rather a dart that runs, all the way down here, and it has seemingly been altered. We'll look at that when we get inside a little bit more, just because it covers up most of this beading down here where the pleat is. There's no seams or anything up at the top, however, just beading there. I do find it interesting that the beading literally runs into that armhole seam, so clearly these were beaded before much of the assembly was done, and perhaps this was a bit smaller in its final format than the beaded pattern called for. So let's get inside here, open that up in pretty decent condition, all things considered. It definitely has a little bit of staining, a little bit of wear and tear over the years, but pretty good. And this is why I was wondering if there was some sort of alterations made. You can see some large hand stitches that run through there. Oh, there is our requisite straight pin! I'm telling you, there's one in nearly every single jacket. I don't know, however, if this is so much an alteration as much as just holding the pleats in place. The pleats and back also are tacked down here at the bottom, and tacked midway as well, so I'm wondering if this was done with the intention of that. That might just be the expectation, which is just crazy to me that you're going to do all of that and then intentionally hide it inside of pleats. Peeking at some of the wear and tear at the armhole here, lots of gathering to get the lining into place. I can see that there is an ever so tiny bit of canvas sticking out. Oh, I also see a little bit of a white flannel. There's definitely layers inside of this. Let's see if we can see a little bit more up here at the shoulder. I have feathers everywhere, too. You can see that flannel up here at the shoulder, so there's an ivory flannel that runs throughout for warmth and a little bit of stability, and then underneath of that is likely to be that layer of canvas. The flannel is loose, but if there is a canvas layer underneath of that, it is not loose. But I don't feel the canvas here, so I don't know if there is canvas running throughout. Down here, a little bit of hand stitching for the lining, a little bit of machine stitching, depending on which piece is assembled in what order. It's definitely tacked to the seam allowances. Seems to be a really common thing in most of the tailored pieces I'm finding, just because it keeps everything from shifting around inside of the garment with time. Flannel in the backs as well, so probably flannel throughout this entire garment would be my guess. And let's get her turned over. Oh, the back is just gorgeous. The front is beautiful, but the back is just covered in all of that beadwork. These sleeves have a seam that runs the exterior here, so it's done underneath this beading. The other seam runs up the front here, so this would have probably, looking at the way that the beading kind of gets grabbed into there, have been assembled partway, and then all of the beadwork done, and then once the person came in to have the garment fitted to them, they would have adjusted that internal seam to fit them. Probably the same thing here, which is why this all runs into the arm side, just because this person may have been a little bit smaller than what the pattern was made for originally. It can definitely condense down. You can see there's also the beading going underneath the shoulders here, so that means that this garment was made in a way that it could be sized up or down pretty easily. That's what sort of defines this as a bit more ready to wear, rather than absolutely couture. Really, the construction is fairly simple. I'm curious what's going on inside of these sleeves, because they feel so very dense. The coat up here feels like there's definitely... ah, that's what the canvas is! So there is, about that deep into the sleeves, a little bit of canvas that's very stiff, and it fades out as we go around towards the bottom. So that's where that canvas is. It's not in the body of the coat, it is in the sleeves, so that way it holds the sleeves out. I always am fascinated to know how they managed to get the sleeve shapes of the different time periods. This era really wants the fullness out and over, rather than up, like the earlier 1890s. Everything on this is relatively simple, but obviously with that much beading, you wouldn't want anything to distract. All three pieces are absolutely beautiful in their own way, and it's really great to see the difference not only in style, but construction methods between the three. Even though they're very close together in time period, you can definitely see the amount of extra time and effort that is put into the couture bodice, simply by the fact that it's beading for trim, rather than just big braids applied very quickly that would have a lot of impact, but wouldn't take a lot of effort. And in the middle we have dealing with fur and making sure that everything is strong and sturdy, the extra lining in the sleeves to keep them warm, showing that there is definitely thought being put into this garment, making sure that it's going to last and be exactly what the person needs, versus what's coming out of the department store, where a lot of effort is put into it, and it's really beautiful and really flashy, and would be eye-catching from across the store. And I really think that's a large point to it, that you would notice this and be really intrigued by it. And of course, with the couture coat on the other end, there's just more time that is put into this than could really be imagined with all of that beadwork, the feathers and the fur. This would have been an incredibly expensive and time- consuming piece, and whoever wore this definitely did so knowing that they were going to get attention.